Utilizing the Hamiltonian dynamics to study resonant interactions of whistler-mode waves and electrons in the solar wind

2021/05/05 by Tien Vo, Vo, Tien
Physics and Astronomy · Earth and Planetary Sciences · #Solar and Space Plasma Dynamics #Ionosphere and magnetosphere dynamics #Atmospheric Ozone and Climate

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2105.02265

Abstract

The role of large amplitude whistler waves in the energization and scattering of solar wind electrons has long been an interesting problem in Space Physics. To study this wave-particle interaction, we developed a vectorized test particle simulation with a variational calculation of the Lyapunov exponents. From using secular perturbation theory on this Hamiltonian system of wave and particle, we confirmed that the pitch angle diffusion of the particle was along the constant Hamiltonian surface and that it was driven by the interaction with the resonance surfaces. We also showed that oblique whistlers could efficiently scatter field-aligned strahl electrons into the halo population in the solar wind. We demonstrated through simulation that these waves were capable of generating horn-like features in the velocity distribution function, similar to recent PIC simulation results in the literature.

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